A Daughter of To-Day eBook

for his hat, which was not a silk one, in the uncertain
way of a man who has heard of the proprieties in these
things. She made him tea with her samovar, and
she talked to him about Parisian journalism and the
Parisian stage in a way that made her a further discovery
to him; and his mind, hitherto wholly devoted to the
service of the Illustrated Age, received an
impetus in a new direction. When he had gone Elfrida
laughed a little, silently, thinking first of this,
for it was quite plain to her. Then, contrasting
what the Age wanted her to write with her ideal
of journalistic literature, she stated to Buddha that
it was “worse than panade.”
“But it means two pounds a week, Buddha,”
she said; “fifty francs! Do you understand
that? It means that we shall be able to stay
here, in the world—­that I shall not be
obliged to take you to Sparta. You don’t
know, Buddha, how you would loathe Sparta!
But understand, it is at that price that we
are going to despise ourselves for a while—­not
for the two pounds!”

And next day she was sent to report a distribution
of diplomas to graduating nurses by the Princess of
Wales.

Buddha was not an adequate confidant. Elfrida
found him capable of absorbing her emotions indefinitely,
but his still smile was not always responsive enough,
so she made a little feast, and asked Golightly Ticke
to tea, the Sunday after the Saturday that made her
a salaried member of the London press. Golightly’s
felicitations were sincere and spasmodically sympathetic,
but he found it impossible to conceal the fact that
of late the world had not smiled equally upon him.
In spite of the dramatic fervor with which the part
of James Jones, a solicitor’s clerk, had been
rendered every evening, the piece at the Princess’s
had to come to an unprofitable close, the theatre
had been leased to an American company, Phyllis had
gone to the provinces, and Mr. Ticke’s abilities
were at the service of chance. By the time he
had reached his second cigarette he was so sunk in
cynicism that Elfrida applied herself delicately to
discover these facts. Golightly made an elaborate
effort to put her off. He threw his head back
in his chair and watched the faint rings of his cigarette
curling into indistinguishability against the ceiling,
and said he was only the dust that blew about the
narrow streets of the world, and why should she care
to know which way the wind took him! Lighting
his third, he said, as bitterly as that engrossment
would permit him, that the sooner—­puff—­it
was over—­puff—­the sooner—­puff—­to
sleep; and when the lighting was quite satisfactorily
accomplished he laughed harshly. “I shall
think,” said Elfrida earnestly, “if you
do not tell me how things are with you, since they
are bad, that you are not a true Bohemian—­that
you have scruples.”

“You know better—­at least I hope
you do—­than to charge me with that,”
Golightly returned, with an inflection full of reproachful
meaning. “I—­I drank myself to
sleep last night, Miss Bell. When the candle
flickered out I thought that it was all over—­curious
sensation. This morning,” he added, looking
through his half-closed eyelashes with sardonic stage
effect, “I wished it had been.”